Saturday, May 13, 2017

As you probably know, many individual SNP candidates are running crowdfunders for the forthcoming general election. All of them are well worth supporting, but it's fair to say you'll get the best bang for your buck if you particularly donate to candidates in constituencies which the SNP are not guaranteed to win. So as a public service, here is a list of links to SNP crowdfunders in constituencies which the party did not win in 2015, or where there is some sort of evidence (sometimes strong, sometimes questionable) that there may be a chance of another party winning this time around.

There are three parties with a recent-ish history in Argyll and Bute, not two. If anything, Alan Reid's candidacy may work in the SNP's favour by preventing the unionist vote breaking decisively for the Tories.

I was taking a maximalist approach to the ones they might lose. To understand what's going on in Orkney & Shetland, you'd need to first crack the mystery of why the SNP did so well two years ago and then so poorly one year ago, and I don't know the answer to that. Individual candidates may matter more in that sort of constituency than they do elsewhere.

The issue in Orkney and Shetland is the coalescence of the union vote round the Lib Dems. Only the Lib Dem candidate and the SNP candidate (who increased the SNP vote from the previous Holyrood election) kept their deposits. Orkney has a huge postal vote which is heavily Lib Dem and hustings etc were scheduled to take place after the postal vite was issued.

They are in the whole, glad to say being funded in full. Would be really, really interesting to see make up of official candidate spends by constituency, so crowdfunded, party contributions and votes cast for them. I bet people vote Unionists but would never put their hand in their pocket to get them elected like SNP, Green supporters would.